The Confederation Repair Desk

Your starting point

Connect a problem under the Articles to the structure that produced it and a proposed constitutional response.

The Articles of Confederation created a union of states that retained substantial sovereignty. Congress could handle important national matters, including war and diplomacy, but its tools were limited. It depended on state contributions rather than a direct national taxing power, and it lacked a general power to regulate interstate commerce. Each state had one vote in Congress. These choices reflected fears of concentrated power after the struggle against Britain.

Some decisions required especially broad agreement. The Articles required nine states for listed major actions, such as entering treaties, and unanimous state approval for amendments. Those rules protected states from easy changes imposed by others, but they also made collective action difficult. A weakness should therefore be explained as a relationship between a design choice and a specific problem, not simply a label saying the government was bad at everything.

Your fictional repair desk has simplified problems based on the Articles’ structure. You will identify causes, compare the later Constitution, and avoid treating every stronger national power as an unlimited one. The Constitution gave Congress taxing and commerce powers, created a separate executive and federal judiciary, and provided a different amendment process. Those changes addressed coordination and authority, while new divisions and rights protections also raised questions about how stronger power would be controlled.

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